


paint my skin in painful truths

by Dancyon



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Gen, Growing Up, Hopeful Ending, Learning to accept yourself, M/M, Soulmate AU, Tattoo AU, learning to let go of your past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 07:20:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14051832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dancyon/pseuds/Dancyon
Summary: a world where every time someone touches you, they leave a tiny tattoo that represents you and them and your future. Neil doesn't remember a lot of good touches, and he doesn't have a lot of happy tattoos, but with Andrew by his side he thinks he might like himself a little bit more.This is mostly fluff with some angst, because this is still me.





	paint my skin in painful truths

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [crazy-like-a-f0x](https://crazy-like-a-f0x.tumblr.com/) for the aftg Exchange

People like Neil wear their nightmares on their skin, haunting and beautiful.

Neil, of course does not remember when his mother’s first touch gave him his first tattoo, inked in golden threads above his heart, beautiful and fierce like the sun. He does not remember his father’s fist touch either, a blood-red petal, twisted and crumbled, hateful. 

The first touch he remembers is when he is seven. They have a new cook and he is funny and thin. Nathaniel is not supposed to enter the kitchen, of course, but he can hear him sing sometimes, low and happy. He shakes his hand seriously, like an adult, and a tiny little yellow star itches against his palm until it blossoms.

Kevin’s first touch gives him a green leaf, hopeful and proud, on his right shoulder, where Kevin claps him in the changing rooms when they are ten and clueless and young.

His mother steals him away that night, and they spend the next 8 years trying to avoid touching people as much as possible, and using foundations two shades darker on the lighter tattoos, fake band-aids on the darker ones that can’t be covered.

He asks his mother once what his first touch gave her. “An orange fox on my belly.” She answers.

He never asks her what his father’s first touch gave her. He does not want to know.

When she dies, he keeps hiding the tattoos out of practice and habit.

When Coach Wymack shows up, he is fiercely glad that Kevin’s first touch was on his shoulder, covered by his gear. He sees a tiny little yellow paw on his damaged left hand, and he knows that he gave that to Kevin, all those years ago. It feels like a sign, an unfolding story of sorrow and bad choices. Neil is too tired to stop fate.

Andrew’s first touch, on the back of his neck, gives him a black key, small and hidden by his curling hair. He doesn’t understand, until he does. Andrew gets and orange key on one finger.

Nicky gives him a small rainbow. Aaron gives him an anatomically correct heart. Dan gives him a tiny mountain on his back. Matt gives him glowing wings. Allison gives him a pointed, red arrow. Seth gives him a howling wolf. Renee gives him a black flower with a pink core.

He gives Nicky a bird, Aaron a snowflake, Dan a leaf, Matt a tiny black cat, Allison a dark moon, Seth an ocean wave and Renee a blooming red rose with a black core.

After a while, he stops covering them up. What’s the point? Everyone knows they are there. (When Kevin finds out who he is, he grabs his shoulder desperately, looking for a lie in Neil’s eyes. He doesn’t find one.)

When Columbia happens, Neil finds out that Andrew has a bird with broken wings on his hip (Drake) and a twisted, bent tree on his heart (Cass).

In a blink, Andrew is gone, and Neil is left with a key on the back of his neck, painfully aware and trying to resist the urge to tear his treacherous skin off. He doesn’t want his bloody history written down the curve of his back, tiny little blood red first touches that took the light from his mother’s eyes, recognizable and ugly, tiny little bloody petals down his back where his father’s people touched him for the first time, one after the other.

He wishes he could erase the written details of his haunting past and start over. Start over with the people who gave him mountains, and arrows, and rainbows, and keys. Start over a new story where there is not death.

It stops being about wanting to start over at Evermore and it becomes about surviving.

Riko gives him a number 4 on his cheekbone and a red raven on his jaw, small and burning like fire on his skin. He gives Riko a cold blade on his palm.

Jean gives him a pale half moon surrounded by hardness. He gives Jean a vivid Sun, hopeful and angry.

When he wakes up on Wymack’s couch, he half think he dreamt everything, until the mirror shatters his lies and brings him back to reality. The red raven throbs where it peaks from his jaw-line.

(He looks at the fox Wymack gave him the next time he looks at himself in the mirror, right on his clavicle. He remembers that with pride and anger every time he thinks of the tiny red raven).

As months go by, he learns to stop hating the bloody story painted on his body, the nightmare that can be read clear as day on his tainted skin.

He starts loving the good ones. The first touches his Foxes gave him, the first touch from a fan after a winning game, the first touch from the captain of another team.

And he loves the story painted on Andrew’s skin; painful and real. He loves the bumblebee on his forearms (Bee), the two faced coin, bright and yellow (Aaron), he loves the rising sun (Nicky) and the golden trophy (Kevin, of course).

He falls in love with every ugly thing that mars his body, because it’s Andrew and he is going to love all of him, even the darkest corner of his soul.

He will wake up in their bed one morning and realize that if he loves the black teardrop on Andrew’s thigh because it’s part of Andrew, part of what he is down to his bones, his story written in painful ink on his skin, then Andrew must love the things that make him Neil as well. He must love the petals and the stars and the moons and the sky, because they are all parts of Neil’s soul.

That day he will get up and make coffee for the both of them, feeling settled in his own skin and not flinching in front of his reflections on the window above the sink. He will not let the people who touched them be a constant reminder. He will realize that it is his skin, his tattoos, his ink. They belong to him and no one can hurt either of them anymore.

That day, years in the future, covered in painful and beautiful first touches, he will realize he is in love with the infuriating, painfully real goalkeeper in his bed. He is in love with the idea of him, and he is in love with every corner of his mind and body and soul.

That will be a happy winter day in February, snow falling outside Detroit and a box of chocolates hidden in his bag.


End file.
